U.S. skier Heidi Kloser is carried off the course by medical personnel after crashing during warm-ups before moguls qualifying at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games on Thursday. (Jens Buettner, Getty Images)

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – The ambulance was on the way. The medical team was leaving. It was a quiet moment after an explosive few minutes that saw Heidi Kloser’s Olympic dreams evaporate. Wrapped in a sled at the bottom of the Olympic mogul course, her broken leg immobilized, she grabbed her mom’s hand.

“She just looked up at me and said ‘Am I still an Olympian?’” Emily Kloser said, her eyes welling as she recalled her daughter’s crushing moment.

Heidi wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even emotional. There wasn’t any “Why me?” or “Why now?”
“No self-pity at all. I was blown away,” Emily said.

The 21-year-old bump skier from Vail simply wanted to know if an athlete is hurt in Olympic practice can she call herself an Olympian? It was a question about the rules.

“I guarantee if anyone had said ‘No,’ she would have somehow figured out how to put a ski boot on and gotten onto that mountain,” Emily said.

In the hospital later, Dr. William Sterrett – the same Vail orthopedic surgeon who already had worked on three of the Klosers: Heidi, Emily and dad Mike – concluded Kloser had blown her ACL, torn her MCL, bruised her tibial plateau and slightly fractured her femur.
Her hopes for Olympic glory were over.

“My training was going really well. I was skiing how I wanted to be. I was in the right place coming into it,” said Kloser, laying flat on a couch in the athlete lounge at the base of the mogul course, where her teammate, defending gold medalist Hannah Kearney had just bobbled a run, slipping to bronze. “Unfortunately I had a mistake in training that cost me the rest of the season.”

It happened so fast, Kloser said. It was her first run of training down the course on Thursday, an hour before the Olympic finals. She hit the top air fast. Maybe too fast.

“I think I slammed the fourth or fifth mogul too hard, just in the wrong place and my knee kind of twists and bent back behind me in a hyper-flexion and it tore and broke,” she said.

She isn’t crying. Her lip isn’t trembling. Her eyes are steady, defiant even. She seems very matter-of-fact. For the goal-focused woman who sacrificed a typical teenage life for relentless training, working for years to climb the ladder of the U.S. Ski Team’s richly talented roster, it’s on the next horizon.

For top-tier ski and snowboard athletes, knee injuries are the price of admission. It’s difficult to find any Olympic-caliber athlete whose knees have not been sliced and re-knotted by surgeons. It’s not a matter of if but when. But what a crushing when for Kloser. Seriously, an hour before the Big Show?

It’s enough to make a bystander weep.

Her parents – champion athletes themselves who brimmed with pride at their daughter’s rise this season to capture a coveted spot on the Olympic mogul team – were ready to be rocked. Sleepless on a numbing four-day sprint through Russia, they were prepared to embrace a sobbing, dissolving daughter as they fought through the crowd to reach her at the bottom of the course on Thursday.

“My heart was in so much pain. My body just ached for her,” said Emily, whose jacket sports a “We ♥ Heidi” sticker, which reads “a couple jumps and some bumps … I can do that.”

Heidi wasn’t hysterical. No tears were streaming down her face. She was in pain, but not showing it.

“Her spirit is so strong. I thought if she can handle this, I can handle it,” Emily said.

Kloser got to walk in the Opening Ceremony, hobbling on crutches and biting her lip in pain. But it was part of her dream Olympic story. Not written the way she dreamed it, but she was in it nonetheless.

“It was an amazing experience,” she said. “I’m sad I didn’t get to ski but I’m happy I got to participate in one of the events of the Games.”

Mike Kloser shows a picture on his phone. It’s a cover of a Turkish newspaper, showing Heidi hobbling with her teammates at the Opening Ceremony. Sure he wishes he was showing a picture of his daughter on a podium, but his pride is palpable. His daughter is showing a strength that will endure well beyond bump skiing.

“She’s mature beyond her years in a lot of ways,” said Mike, a world-renowned endurance athlete. “I’m totally bummed for her but on the flip side, she’s a strong girl and she will come out of this even stronger, both physically and mentally. I think this will make her that much tougher down the road.”

Meyer will be covering his 12th Olympic Games in Rio this summer. He has covered five World Alpine Ski Championships and more than 100 World Cup ski events. He is a member of the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills.

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The All Things Olympics blog from The Denver Post covers the athletes, events and stories of the Olympic Games and Olympic sports, including the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. Its writers — John Meyer, Jason Blevins and Mark Kiszla — will feature profiles, articles, analysis and personal reflection.